


Find Your Focus

by CooperCooperGo



Series: Imagine ClintCoulson Prompt Fills [5]
Category: Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Afghanistan, M/M, Profanity, Snipers, meet ugly, pre-phlint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-10 23:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10449960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CooperCooperGo/pseuds/CooperCooperGo
Summary: From the prompt: Although I love all the "meet-cute" stories for c/c I would also like to see them "meet-ugly."





	

Some guy in a suit flopped down on his belly right beside him. Clint hadn’t heard him come in over the nearly constant gunfire outside and the ebb and crest of panicked chatter over comms. He didn’t think their position had been overrun yet, least of all by a battalion of men in expensive-looking dark suits, so he stayed prone behind the sniper rifle with his eye on the scope. Besides, they’d been pinned down here for hours and by now he honestly wasn’t sure he could have gotten up without help anyway.

The guy picked up Harris’ spotter scope off the floor, wiped the blood off it to get a better grip, locked his elbows and raised the scope to his eyes.

“Keep your focus,” he snapped at Clint, obviously used to being obeyed.

“Fuck you,” Clint mumbled, jerking his attention back to the scope. His tongue was thick in his mouth. It was at least 38C in the shade outside the crappy hide he and Harris had set up on the sixth floor of a bombed-out apartment building. Fine dust swirled in the wide open windows on a hot, dry, wind. His skin was caked and cracked with it.

He didn’t know why the suit guy was here but it didn’t really change much one way or the other. The sniper that’d shot Harris was still out there somewhere and Clint had lost him. He felt maybe he should volunteer that information.

“I don’t have him,” he said.

“Where was he last?” the suit guy asked.

“Top floor….opposite.” Clint worked his tongue back and forth, trying to generate enough spit to at least answer the guy’s questions.

There was a rustle next to him. Clint opened his other eye to watch the suit out of his peripheral vision as he retrieved something out of his pack. He felt a straw against the cracked skin of his lower lip.

“Drink.”

Clint emptied the small box of orange juice in two long sucks. It was the best thing he’d tasted in his entire life. He licked his lips.

“Bring any vodka to go with that?”

The suit guy huffed a dry chuckle. “Sorry,” he said. “Want another?”

“I’m good.” Clint and Harris had been stalking the rival sniper for almost three days, scuttling from hide to hide while his squad was pinned down around them. He wasn’t good. He’d tipped over into that weird head-space you inhabit when you’ve been micro-focusing through a sniper scope for way too long.

“Alright,” the suit guy said, minutely moving his scope back and forth, looking for movement. “You’re doing great.”

This random guy’s generic praise shouldn’t have felt as good as it did. Maybe it was just the sugar from the juice hitting his system or something but Clint felt a little of the bone-weary fatigue recede.

There was a lull in the gunfire outside. Clint assumed everyone was reloading. Maybe they’d run out of bullets.

“Is Harris dead?” he asked. There was no movement through his scope, nothing at all but the shimmer of heat in the air, the glare of sun off the pitted concrete of the building across the dirty square.

“Is Harris the soldier over there with the 50 cal round in his chest?

That kinda answered the question.

“Friend of yours?” the guy asked, not unkindly.

“Not really. Good spotter, though.” Clint hadn’t really connected with anyone in the army. He’d never considered staying long enough to invest the time in making any friends. His initial plan was just to get off the streets for a while, get fed on the regular off the military’s dime. Somewhere along the line it had all become routine. This was his third tour. He was good at his job, the best. He knew what he did saved lives. But something was still missing. Something about his life still unfocused.

There was a flicker of movement in the window across the street.

“Did you—?”

“I see it,” the guy said.

“Gone again,” Clint said. “I don’t get it, he just disappears. Maybe my sight is—“

“Your sight is fine,” the suit said, steadily focused on the scope. “He’s using 0-8-4 cloaking tech.”

“What’s—?”

“Above your pay grade, soldier,” the suit said. “It’s why I’m here.”

Another flicker. “He’s moving,” the suit said. “I think he’s heading for the roof. Probably so he can get a better shot at us through that window.”

This was bad. “I can’t set up for that,” Clint said, searching for another flash of movement. “The shot that took out Harris messed up the tripod. The angle’s all wrong from the floor.”

The suit pushed himself up. “Up! Get up, get back against that wall.”

Clint jerked to obey before he realized he’d done it. But keeping the same position for hours had locked up his muscles and he couldn’t break his grip on the rifle.

“I can’t—“

“Alright, it’s alright,” the suit guy’s hands were on him suddenly, firm but gentle, carefully prying his fingers off the stock of the gun. He pushed and pulled at Clint until he got him on his ass, then helped him scoot backward, back to the pitted wall behind him.

“It’s okay. You’ll be okay.” The guy kept up a litany of calm reassurance as he pushed at Clint’s numb legs, backing him up against the wall. The sudden burning rush of sensation into the over-tired muscles in his back and legs made him squeeze his eyes shut, grit and sand cracking against clinched teeth.

“Hey, hey.” The suit guy’s voice was insistent. Clint opened his eyes and looked up. The man’s eyes were blue and kind. They were sort of crinkly at the corners. He registered one of the guy’s big hands on his neck when he gave him a gentle shake. “Okay?” he asked. Clint nodded slowly, blinking like he was emerging from a dream.

“Good,” the guy said. “Barton, is it?” he tracked the guy’s eyes reading his name off his tag, still pushing him back into place.

“Clint,” he said, wondering briefly why he’d give the guy his first name. It felt right somehow.

“You’re doing very well, Clint,” the guy said without missing a beat. “We’re going to get this done. Here—“

Clint felt the wall at his back. The suit guy grabbed one of his knees, bent it up and pushed it out. “Like this,” he said. Then he turned and scooted on his butt back into the ‘v’ of Clint’s bent legs.

“What are—?” Clint’s tenuous grasp on reality after hours behind the gun slid a little further to the left.

The man pushed the stock of the sniper rifle back into Clint’s hands. Then lifted the long barrel of the gun to his own shoulder. Gun oil and grime smeared the fabric of the fine black suit.

“You can’t be serious,” Clint started. He’d seen this done on a training video once but everyone knew that—

“We don’t have a tripod, this is the only way to get the angle, you can do this,” the man said, retrieving a pair of ear plugs from his pack. He smushed the plugs into his ears and pulled his legs up. Then he locked his arms around his knees, scope raised on bent elbows and went completely, utterly still.

“Fuck,” Clint said, getting a grip on the rifle. “This is fucking nuts.”

“You can do this, Clint.”

“Fuck,” Clint’s hands were busy readjusting the settings on the gun. He shoved his face back into the scope, not surprised to feel the edge of the eye-piece slotting neatly into the indentation already worn into his skin. “Fuck,” he said again, softly.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay. I’ve got movement, roof now, by the air-con unit, you see it?”

“I don’t—“

“By that divot out of the concrete, to the left, to the left of the—“

“I see it, I see him,” Clint hissed.

“Okay, there’s no telling how long it’ll take his cloaking device to power back on again. You need to take the shot, Clint, you need to take it now.”

The suit guy was right in front of the window, right in front of Clint. He didn’t know if he was wearing a vest. When the other sniper saw the muzzle flash from Clint’s gun…

“If I miss, he’ll know where we are! He’ll take you out just like he did Harris!” The thought of suit guy dying in his arms sent a shock of regret through Clint’s gut so hard it made him gasp.

“You’re not going to miss, you’re going to shoot that fucker, okay? And then we can go home.”

Clint felt a panicked urge to laugh “But—“ The movement resolved itself in his scope. A dark shape, a shoulder or the top of a head, maybe.

“Send it!” the suit hissed. Breathed in and held it.

The image flickered. Clint squeezed the trigger. The retort of the gun was deafening in the small room. He watched the shock wave though the optic, knew he’d missed before he saw the small puff of vaporised concrete the round took out of the wall. Too far to the left.

“I don’t have dope on that distance! I can’t square the scope!”

“I want you to breathe, Clint, I want you to breathe and I want you to find your focus. We’re going to do this.”

“Don’t use that bullshit dog-whisperer shit on me, you can’t just—“

The burst of concrete dust by his right leg registered before the sound of the shot did. The other sniper had fired right through the window just like Clint knew he would. The suit guy jerked between his legs before straightening with the scope again.

“Are you—?!”

“We’re on the clock here, Clint,” the guy said through gritted teeth, eyes pressed to the scope.

Though Clint’s scope his view of the sniper across the square flickered. Resolved.

“Send it,” the suit guy whispered.

This time Clint didn’t need to see the pink spray that told him he’d ended the other sniper. He knew the round would hit the moment it left the barrel. His sigh came up from the bottom of his toes, the first free breath he taken in days.

“Good shot,” the guy in the suit murmured before collapsing back into Clint’s chest. Clint grabbed at him to keep him from sliding to the floor. His hand came away from the guy’s side slick and hot with blood.

* * *

“You’ve got a visitor,” Hill said. She shot Phil an arch look as she got up from the visitor’s chair by his bedside. “I think you made a friend,” she stage-whispered, turning to go. Her smirk was infuriating. Phil rubbed his forehead with his middle finger. She laughed.

Hill nodded at the soldier as she passed him on the way out, standing awkwardly in the doorway of Phil’s hospital room, looking a half-second away from full retreat. He had on civilian clothes, except for the unlaced army boots, and his purple t-shirt stretched alluringly over the broad expanse of his chest. He was tall. His sandy blonde hair stood up at weird angles as if he’d been running his hands though it. He looked too big and too rough for the white, sterile space of SHIELD’s medical wing.

When he noticed Phil’s appraising stare his eyes dropped to the floor. Flickered back up again, blue through thick lashes. Phil’s heart thumped once, loudly, in his chest.

He cleared his throat. “Mr. Barton,” he said. “Please come in.”

Barton took three strides into the room and stopped in what he probably thought was a pretty good parade-rest.

The minute hand of the clock on the wall slowly ticked by.

“Is there something I can help you with, Bar—?”

“They offered me a job here,” he blurted.

Phil nodded slowly. “You’re a good shot.”

“I used to say I never miss.” Barton looked down again. Phil realised suddenly that something had shaken him. The deliberately casual tone was masking something else.

In Phil's mind, puzzle pieces shuffled, rearranged themselves. A picture emerged. He sighed. “Clint, you made what is, frankly, an impossible shot on only your second try. This on top of exhaustion and dehydration, off the shoulder of a some guy who just randomly showed up to replace your KIA partner. That's not a miss, that is remarkable skill.”

Barton shuffled his feet, shyly. The faint dusting of pink high on his sun-weathered, stubble-covered cheeks was unbelievably attractive. “You took a round because of me,” he muttered, looking at the floor.

“It was just a graze. You did your job and you did it well. You have no reason to doubt your ability.”

Phil watched the blush spread with something like fascination. This guy had a resting face that would curdle milk. That he could be so shyly responsive to praise was…intriguing.

Barton looked up. “You should see me with the bow,” he grinned, a quick flash of teeth. Maybe even a little bit cocky. Phil swallowed.

“You can show me when I get out of here,” Phil said. “I’ll look forward to it.” And he meant it.

**Author's Note:**

> ImagineClintCoulson prompt: Although I love all the "meet-cute" stories for c/c I would also like to see them "meet-ugly." 
> 
> ImagineClintCoulson is accepting new prompts at [imagineclintcoulson.tumblr.com](https://imagineclintcoulson.tumblr.com/message) so feel welcome to drop by with a little headcanon or ask.


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